Bart Stupak: “I hope we will defeat this motion to recommit. I sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I've done a lot of work on…”

“I hope we will defeat this motion to recommit. I sit on the Energy and Commerce Committee. I've done a lot of work on oil and gas, and I was in my office when I heard all these myths coming from the other side, and I thought we had to come down and refute this. My friends on this side of the aisle keep saying Congress needs to open more areas to domestic drilling. The U.S. has already increased domestic drilling, and gas prices have continued to climb. Since 2000, the number of wells drilled on Federal lands has increased by 66 percent, from 3,000 to nearly 5,000 wells. During that same time, the price of gas has doubled. According to the Federal Government, 79 percent of the oil in the Outer Continental Shelf is already available for leasing. Eighty-two percent of the gas in the Outer Continental Shelf is available for leasing. And still, we open up more lands to leasing in 2006. The U.S. cannot drill its way out of high energy costs. The other fact that my friends always try to put forth is that environmental laws are stopping oil companies from building refineries. Completely false. In the 2005 Energy Policy Act, we actually put in there a section that, as Secretary of Energy Bodman said, eases the constraints that have strangled new refinery construction. We put that in in 2005; yet no one has ever come forward and said we want to use that provision to put forth more refineries. The U.S. has actually shut down its refineries.”